The Prince And The Nanny

She was having this reaction without his passing the toenail test!

It felt as if every bit of progress she had made in the last six months was suddenly threatened by a single touch from this stranger. It was as if the bottom was falling out of her world, as if she was tumbling crazily down with it.

“Miss Winslow,” he said, and his voice was an enchantment—deep, masculine, faintly musical. “What a pleasure.”

She loved his accent. She tried to bite out Your Royal Highness, but somehow she could not. If she knew how to curtsy, she suspected she would!

She tried to tuck a wayward curl behind her ear, failed, and then shoved her hands behind her back.

Say something, she ordered herself. “Hi.”

She felt the man in the green uniform’s tiny flinch, but if the prince was in any way offended it did not show.

He regarded her with those clear, astonishing eyes, and then smiled faintly.

The smile was devastating, despite the fact his two front teeth were faintly crooked and over lapped each other. Crooked teeth was on her list!

Still, that smile took the faint sternness on a face too young to hold sternness and washed it away. The faint imperfection of his teeth was oddly appealing.

So, despite the teeth his mouth was entirely kissable. One kiss and she would know. Prince, or toad?

Stop it, she ordered herself.

“Please,” he said, “have a seat.” He gestured to a chair, and then took a seat on the sofa at right angles to it. “Would you care for a refreshment?”

Whiskey on the rocks. Make it a double. “No, thank you.” She knew she should add Your Royal Highness or at least sir, but she was unable to do so, barely able to squeak out her refusal.

“Tell me a little about yourself,” he invited.

She stared at him, and then asked, flabbergasted, “Why?”

He frowned slightly. She suspected he was not accustomed to any request being questioned. Arrogant, she reminded herself. Still, he regarded her so thoughtfully she had to fight to keep from squirming.

Finally he said, “I read about your act of heroism in the newspaper. I’m here in New York on business. It made me curious about you.”

“Oh.” There was a terrible desire to spill it all—about the fear and loneliness and crippling self-doubt and self-evaluation and humiliation since her father’s death. There was a terrible desire to dismiss the arrogance, and trust whatever it was she saw in those eyes.

Depth?

Those eyes, she reminded herself, that had complete strangers in the lobby making fools of themselves, waving signs that said Someday My Prince Will Come.

“There’s nothing to know,” she said, hastily, her voice cool in defense of that familiar craving that she felt.

His silence was as commanding as his question had been, so she added, “Really.”

He still said nothing, and so she felt compelled to fill the silence between them.

“It wasn’t an act of heroism,” she said hurriedly, though she realized probably one did not correct the prince. “It wasn’t anything of the sort. It happened very quickly, and I never once made a conscious decision. I was crossing the street with the light, I realized a car was coming much too quickly, and that it wasn’t going to stop. I managed to shove the stroller out of the way, the car hit me. Not even very hard, really.”

She had a bruise on her hip the size of a pineapple, but even thinking about her naked hip in the presence of the prince seemed wildly off color, like thinking of nine fannies, which of course now she was!

“But isn’t that the nature of true courage?” he asked softly, “That it comes naturally, without a conscious thought?”

“No,” she said, “it’s not. True courage is to feel fear, and then to act in an honorable way, despite that.”

“Is it possible both forms are equally relevant?”

She had a feeling of being in a dream. She, who was only an hour removed from having butterscotch pudding spilled down her front, she who had irreverent and uncontrollable thoughts about the name of her employer’s most dignified business, she who thought about toilet paper wrapped dogs at funerals, was now sitting in a suite having a philosophical conversation with a prince. She was trying desperately to see him through the filter of her Fatal Flaws List, and just as desperately trying to conduct herself with some semblance of grace.

Prudence might have laughed at the absurdity of life, if she didn’t make the mistake of meeting his eyes.

She saw it again. Depth. Something absurdly compelling. Eyes like that could make a woman do or say something really stupid.

Mrs. Smith’s Academy of Nine Fannies.

“It wasn’t courage,” she insisted. “Instinct.”

“A mother having that kind of instinct I could understand. But to put yourself in such peril for a child that was not your own, that is something else.”

“I’m trying to tell you it was nothing,” she said.

“And I’m trying to tell you,” he said, his voice soft with command, “that it was something.”

“Oh.” Nearly as bad as hi but the man was stealing her breath and her wits at the same time as he was being arrogant! He hadn’t even been there. Who was he to decide what it had or hadn’t been?

“I am considering offering you a position in my household.”

She stared at him, aghast. She was barely going to be able to survive this interview with her vow intact. No men. No kisses. No attractions. No dates. No. No. No. She had six months to go! He was flawed, obviously, but to test herself by working in his household? Never!

“Your Royal Prince,” she said, “I don’t want to work for you. I mean in your household. I mean I am very happy where I’m at.”

Your Royal Prince! Mrs. Smith should have never trusted her with this kind of delicate assignment!

She didn’t like that smile one little bit, now. It said clearly that what she wanted was of little or no significance to him.

His life was about getting what he wanted. She suspected always. She hated that. Men who always get what they want was moving to number one on her list.

“I look after children,” she stated uneasily. “What would I do in your household?”

“I have two children,” he answered.

For some reason that left her flummoxed. She hadn’t thought he was married. Why not? How couldn’t he be? When he looked like that, and obviously the female population was intent on throwing themselves at him, how could he be unattached?

Oh, so this was what the universe was showing her. The prince was not ugly, fat, old or bald, though he did have some flaws. The biggest one: yippee, he was unavailable. She should be dancing for joy! Instead she felt strangely bereft, already giving in to her former self!

“I’m a widower,” he said softly.

She did not like the stab of sympathy that flashed through her. Or the strange sensation of relief. So, he was available. He was definitely not available to the likes of her.

Not that she was in the market for a prince. Not now.

“I don’t want to change jobs,” she said, a little more desperately. What she meant was she did not want to work for him. She did not want to indulge that small, weak part of her that wanted to believe in fairy tales!

And she truly did not want to change jobs. She loved little Brian. In that very instant she forgave him the butterscotch stain on her best coat. Besides, Loaves and Fishes needed her! She was proving an inspired fund-raiser.

A door opened behind them, and her green clad escort came in. And through the open door with him, unnoticed save by her, slipped a child.

He was a devilish looking little imp, perhaps five. He tucked himself behind the back of the sofa the prince was seated on. Ronald bent and said something to the prince in an undertone, the prince turned his attention over his shoulder to him.

Prue watched the place where the small boy was. Sure enough, in a moment, the unruly black hair appeared over the sofa, and then eyes bright and blue and full of dark mischief. The child’s eyebrows beetled down as he regarded her with pint-size disapproval. There was no doubting he was his father’s son!

She beetled hers back at him.

He shifted upward, so that his face was revealed. He was an exceptionally handsome little boy. He regarded her with what she could only conclude was patent dislike—much like Brian had shown the temporary nanny this morning. Then he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue, not in play.

She shot a look at the prince, who was still otherwise engaged, and then looked back at the child.

She did something that probably would have given Mrs. Smith a heart attack. Prudence crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue back.

Ryan chose that moment to look back at her.

He had to bite the side of his cheek to keep from reacting to her crossed eyes and her tongue stuck out. He felt as if he had been biting the side of his cheek since the moment he had first seen her.

The truth was nothing—not his meeting with Mrs. Smith, and not the photo in the paper—had prepared him for Miss Prudence Winslow in the flesh.

She was tall and slender, and had one of the most magnificent heads of hair he had ever seen. Those red curls crackled and curled around her head as if they were filled with electricity. She was intensely beautiful—a perfect nose, wide mouth, milky skin—not at all the demure nanny Mrs. Smith’s rather plain office and the heap of clothes in the newspaper picture had led him to believe he would be meeting.

Her eyes were as green as the pool beneath Myria Falls, on his island home, and they flashed with spirit, a subtle defiance, again on a collision course with his expectations.

Though her clothes were rumpled and dowdy, she carried herself with such cache that it looked as if the clothes were meant to be that way!

She was really the kind of woman a man should be prepared to meet, and he was not.

The defiance showed itself again when she did not use his title, and when she did, she used it incorrectly. Deliberately?

She had been tardy and rude, and though he suspected neither was intentional, he was aware within moments of meeting her that she would not be a good fit in his smoothly run household, just as Mrs. Smith had tried to warn him.

The people retained by his family had worked those positions through generations, father teaching son, mother teaching daughter. They were proud to be of service to the House of Kaelan. A woman like this one would be a terrible disruption to the routine of the castle, which had probably not changed in three hundred years.

The thought made him feel oddly restless, rather than contented.

Besides, the royal nannies were proving problematic. It was a different age than the one he had been raised in, and the prince was aware of wanting something—no, aching for something—different for his children. His son in particular was having such problems since the death of his mother. The child who had always been like the sun was querulous now, and angry. His mischief ran to meanness.

His son, Gavin, needed someone not quite so rigid as the nanny Ryan had just dismissed a week ago. He needed something. He was not sure what, but when he saw Prudence Winslow he was certain she was it.

And when he turned back from his conversation with Ronald, to see her green eyes crossed and her tongue out, he thought for the first time, I’ve made a mistake. My instincts were wrong. Let her go back to her life.

But then, surprised, he became aware his son had arrived in the room and tucked himself behind the sofa. He turned and gave Gavin a look he intended to be stern, but the look melted.

Gavin was smiling.

And not that wicked black smile that Ryan had come to dread, that meant his son had been up to no good, had been tormenting the staff, or the baby, or his nanny, or one of the queen’s dogs. Six nannies in six months because of one small, hurting child.

No, on Gavin’s face was a true smile, tentative, but true. When he saw his father watching him, the smile disappeared, he glared and marched from the room.

“That was my son, Gavin,” Ryan said, watching her face. “He lost his mother thirteen months ago. He’s having a hard time of it.”

He saw, finally, what he needed to see in her eyes. Not pride and not belligerence, a terrible softness, so soft he could feel a longing in himself.

He killed it quickly. His entire marriage he had longed. He had been young and hoped for happiness, despite the fact the marriage had been arranged. Raina had hoped, too. She had hoped by marrying so well, by marrying a prince, by becoming a princess, she could forget that she had loved another….

Sternly he turned his thoughts from those painful memories. He had two beautiful children.

“There’s a baby as well,” he said, watching her even more closely. For some reason, he found himself fishing in the pocket underneath his sweater, passing her the photo of his little Sara. “She’s still a little too young to travel with me.”

Prudence hesitated, then leaned forward and took the photo.

The tiniest of smiles tickled her lips.

Sara had that effect on people: with her sparse hair always standing straight up, black dandelion fluff, and her huge eyes, blue, intense, curious.

“She’s thirteen months old. My wife died while giving birth to her.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, and she meant it. Her eyes drifted from the picture, followed where Gavin had gone.

Ryan felt something in him sigh with relief. She would love his children. That was the ingredient that made you guard someone else’s child with your own life.

Love.

The missing ingredient in his life. The thought was renegade and he amended it quickly, the missing ingredient in all the other nannies, including the ones he had grown up with.

Caring, of course. Dedicated, yes. Respectful, naturally.

But always falling just a hair short of what he saw, unguarded, for just a moment in the green of Prudence Winslow’s eyes as she looked at the place where his son had stood only moments ago.

He had managed to get some skimpy paperwork on the nanny from Mrs. Smith. He knew Prudence Winslow was qualified for this job.

But where he really knew it, that place he had learned to count on more than any other, his instinct. Instinct had told him not to marry Raina. But he’d been twenty-two, under pressure, not really given a choice…

Since then, aware of the cataclysmic consequences of ignoring his instincts, Ryan tried to pay more attention to that voice. It had been nagging him since he had first seen the picture, and now it whispered, firmly, yes.

Even though she would probably never call him Your Royal Highness without nearly choking, even though his household was probably not ready for her, and neither was he, he knew his children needed her. He had known that from the moment he had seen that newspaper and read about a young nanny who had put the life of her young charge ahead of her own.

“I want you to think about returning to the Isle of Momhilegra with me,” he said. “As the head—” Suddenly he was no more able to call her a nanny, than she was able to call him Your Royal Highness. “To look after my children,” he amended.

She stared at him, looked away, leaped suddenly to her feet.

“May I have my coat?” Her cheeks were staining a beautiful, angry shade of red. “Thank you, but I said no. I’m very happy with the position I have now.”

For a moment her eyes trailed to his lips, the look in them so intense he felt scorched. But then her coat was brought and she left in a flurry of activity.

He smiled slightly as the door slammed behind her. “Ronald?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I’d like to watch a movie this afternoon. The Sound of Music. Could you find it for me?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“And there’s something else I need done.”

Ronald listened to his request, nodded his head. By later today, if things were as he hoped, Miss Winslow was going to find herself dismissed from her current position.

Other men might have worried about such a high-handed approach to another’s life, but Ryan was a man of complete discipline, who had known only one reality his entire life, and that reality was that duty came before personal dreams, personal desires.

Of course, in terms of his marriage that had been disastrous, but he wasn’t, after all, marrying Miss Winslow. He was employing her. It did not really occur to him that Miss Winslow might resent his decision-making on her behalf. People liked working for him. They were compensated beyond their wildest dreams. Her initial reluctance to accept his offer would most certainly turn to gratitude, if she was a reasonable woman.

So, with that taken care of Ryan, settled in to watch the movie. He invited Gavin to watch it with him, but his son wanted to play a video game on the television in his bedroom. And not be in the same room as his father.

The movie was entertaining, a good diversion from his frustration over yet another rejection by Gavin. Still, when he turned the movie off, Ryan felt pensive despite the “feel good” theme of the show.

Maria times ten? That did not add up to a reasonable woman. Plus, Maria would have never looked at a man’s lips in a way that would leave him feeling scorched!

“Oh, dear,” he said borrowing a phrase from Mrs. Smith. “Oh dear, indeed.”

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU’RE firing me?” Prudence asked, stunned.

Mrs. Hilroy knitted her hands together, and looked around Prue’s humble basement quarters with discomfort.

“Of course I’m not firing you,” she stammered uneasily. “There must be a way to say this that is gentle and expresses what you mean to me. And Brian. Terminated. No, no, that’s much too harsh. I’m letting you go. Yes! Letting you go. To brighter things. And bigger things.”

Prudence knew, hollowly, that no matter how frantically Mrs. Hilroy tried to sugarcoat her announcement, it was all semantics. She was being dismissed. This morning she had a job. Now she did not. How could she not have seen this coming?

“You saved Brian’s life,” Mrs. Hilroy gushed.

How good of you to remember that, Prue thought sadly. “I think this is the worst day of my life.”

“Surely you exaggerate,” Mrs. Hilroy said with dismay.

“Probably,” Prudence agreed dryly. Worst day was possibly too dramatic. The day her father had died had been worse. The weeks following had been one terrible day after another. Not just because of his staggering financial disasters, but because she’d had to realize the love a small, lost, lonely child had craved from him was never going to happen. She’d had to grow up.

But today had been a horrendous day, even if it did not rate as highly on the horrible scale as did others. She was losing her position with the Hilroys!

Ever since her interview with the prince, Prue had a sense, not exactly of foreboding, but of her world being shaken, tested. Her sense of herself had felt wobbly and strained ever since she had first looked into the amazing blue of his eyes, listened to the masculine melody of his speech. In some language, unspoken, he had asked her to look at herself differently.

When she damn well didn’t want to! She didn’t want to ask herself questions like, was she truly happy or did loneliness yap at her heels like a small dog protecting its yard? She didn’t want to ask herself what did her future hold? Where was her life going?

She especially did not want to ask herself if her Fatal Flaws List was, well, flawed. It was retired anyway!

She was glad she had told him no. It probably rated as one of the better decisions of her life! She felt as if the devil had met her and held out what she most wanted. Despite the fact Prince Kaelan had some flaws that didn’t fit the picture, it was still the fairy-tale fantasy and she’d developed the strength of character in the last few months to recognize it for exactly what it was!

A lie. An illusion.

No prince was coming to rescue her. She was on her own!

And now, after hearing Mrs. Hilroy’s announcement, she was really on her own. Out-on-her-ear on her own!

She felt the smallest tinge of regret about her interview with the prince. If she’d heard him out, she might have found out if he was paying more than the pittance she made here!

Used to make here.

Certainly whatever accommodations he was offering had to be better than this cold, barely finished room, tucked in between the noisy furnace and the laundry room in the Hilroys’s basement.

The thought of going back to him now, hat in hand, saying she was suddenly available was just too humiliating. Besides, she could not work for a man with eyes like that!

But on the other hand she was certain if she lost another position, Miss Smith was going to wash her hands of her, heroics not withstanding. This was her third chance, her “bus ride” as she told Brian when they were playing Go Fish and he had run out of toothpicks to bet! Mrs. Smith had been tolerant, and remarkably supportive, but Prudence had always been aware that this posting with the Hilroys had been her last chance with the Academy of Fine Nannies.

“It’s just that since the accident,” Mrs. Hilroy said, “I’m so aware of wanting to be with my son. Of needing to be with him. What if you hadn’t thrown him clear that day? What if I would have missed the last day of his life? Traded moments with him for money?”

Prue gathered her wits and looked at Mrs. Hilroy’s distraught face. Her self-pity was replaced with reluctant compassion. If Brian was her son, she wouldn’t want to leave him to go to work every day. Mrs. Hilroy was making the right decision, the noble decision, a decision that put Brian’s needs first.

My work here is done, Prudence thought, but could not completely bite back a sigh. “So, it has nothing to do with me, then? It’s not because of my performance?”

“Prudence, you have been a breath of fresh air in this house. My child adores you. But, selfishly, I want him to cry and fuss when I leave to go out, not when you do.”

A perfectly reasonable way for a mother to feel.

“When do you need me to vacate my room?” Prue asked, dully. “I don’t suppose you’ll be needing a cleaning lady, will you?”

It hurt to say that. It was humbling to say that. And completely unnecessary. There had to be thousands of jobs she was well qualified to do. But it gave her a headache to think about it. And she needed to be employed again fast. She had no savings, and no health care, and despite her love of Loaves and Fishes, she had rather hoped never to need their services again!

She felt like a disgrace and a loser, and it was humbling how fast she could feel that way when she had been working so hard to make her self-esteem become about her, become so much more than the man on her arm.

“B-b-but, I understood you had been offered another job,” Mrs. Hilroy wailed.

The budding compassion Prue had been feeling for her employer left her with a plop that was almost audible in the tight confines of her small room. Understanding curled in her like sour milk hitting hot coffee.

Even as she warned herself to keep her legendary temper, Prudence stalked over to Mrs. Hilroy who took a step back from her.

“Excuse me?” Prue said dangerously.

“I understood you had been offered a job. Prudence, by a prince! Are you mad? How could you refuse an opportunity like that?”

“How do you know about that?” Prue asked softly.

Mrs. Hilroy went very quiet. Her eyes slid away from Prue’s.

“Who told you I’d been offered another job? Mrs. Smith?”

“Actually I talked to Abigail first, but I was very upset. I didn’t want to let you go! And then he called himself.”

Himself. In an outrageous tone of voice that should be reserved for the pope or the president. Okay, or maybe a prince. “You spoke to him?”

“Just on the phone,” Mrs. Hilroy said. “I’ve never spoken to a prince before. It was lovely.”